FYI: eChalk Adds 'Student-Safe' Academic Blogging

eChalk provides a Web-based suite of communications, learning, management, administrative, and collaboration tools, along with standards-aligned digital content. Their online learning environment is targeted toward K-12 schools and now includes blogging. eChalk reported, "The integrated blog is designed to improve how students practice writing and thinking by aligning K-12 education to higher education, where all assignments require cognitive skills like logic, reasoning, and judgment to be used regularly. The blogging tool can be maintained publicly or privately, with all participants equally protected in a system controlled by each school or district. All users can create posts, moderate comments, enable RSS syndication, add images, upload videos and podcasts, and subscribe to other appropriate blogs. Posts and comments are archived in a portfolio that follows students year to year."

The system also includes polling and survey tools for evaluating blogs based on student- and teacher-defined criteria. For more information, visit: http://www.echalk.com/